Education is Elevation

Click here for old digital copies of Black Panther News Paper

I have a 1970 issue of The Black Panther sitting right in front of me. Cost a quarter. On the front, the headline screams about imperialism. On the back, there’s an announcement about a free food rally. To the untrained eye, these look like two separate concerns—one global, one local. The Panthers understood something that many of us on social media today seem to have forgotten. You cannot fight the local battle if you ignore the global war.

Public education faces systematic defunding. Black history gets legislated out of existence. Some of us engage in activism by posting infographics to stories that disappear in 24 hours. We need to sit with that 1970 newspaper for a minute. We need to ask ourselves what they knew that we’ve forgotten.

The Internationalism of the Neighborhood

Eldridge Cleaver sat for an interview in Algiers in December 1969. He didn’t limit his critique to Oakland. He didn’t restrict his analysis to police brutality in America. He looked at Palestine. He looked at Israel. He looked at the global structure of imperialism and saw the connecting tissue. “Israel is the creature of American imperialism,” Cleaver stated. “It is a police post in the Middle East to safeguard and protect the interests of U.S. imperialism.”

Some people might ask why the Black Panthers worried about the Middle East. The answer is simple. The same system that sends police to beat Black heads in Chicago sends military aid to Israel. The same imperial logic that colonized Africa requires a domestic police force to manage the “internal colony” of Black America. Panther minister of education Raymond “Masai” Hewitt explained they weren’t interested in rigid ideological lines. They were interested in anyone fighting oppression. “We dig what they are doing,” he said of Third World revolutionaries.

This was not abstract solidarity. This was strategic analysis. The Panthers understood that the CIA and FBI don’t just share intelligence. They share tactics. A lawman sent to perfect policing skills in Israel or Vietnam brings those skills back to American streets. The baton that cracks a skull in Memphis often uses techniques designed from occupations abroad.

Click here for old digital copies of Black Panther News Paper

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We Charge Genocide: The International Court of Public Opinion

The Panthers’ internationalism wasn’t just rhetorical. They took action. They understood that if the domestic courts were compromised, you appeal to the world. William Patterson submitted a petition to the United Nations in 1951 titled We Charge Genocide. He charged the U.S. government with violating the Genocide Convention through police violence and systemic neglect. The Panthers picked up that baton.

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale explicitly petitioned the UN by 1973. They argued that “the savage police activities, based upon official policies of Federal, State and City governments” constituted genocide under international law. They demanded reparations. They demanded sanctions. They demanded that the world treat the situation of Black America not as a domestic issue of civil rights, but as an international issue of human rights.

This move embodies the “think globally, act locally” slogan. You act locally—you feed the children, you patrol the police, you organize the community. You think globally. You understand that your local struggle connects to Palestine, to Vietnam, to South Africa. You force the world to bear witness.

Survival Pending Revolution

The part that often gets left out of history books and Twitter threads involves feeding local children while fighting global imperialism.

The Free Breakfast for Children Program began in January 1969 at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in West Oakland. Within a year, the Panthers were feeding 20,000 children across the country. They weren’t waiting for the revolution to start feeding people. They understood that hungry children can’t learn. Uneducated communities can’t organize.

A top government official was forced to admit that the Panthers were feeding more kids than the federal government. Think about that. A self-described revolutionary organization outperformed the federal government at providing basic social services. They ran medical clinics. They tested for sickle cell anemia. They provided free busing to prisons so families could maintain contact with incarcerated loved ones.

This contradiction the FBI couldn’t handle. Infiltrating a group of people with guns proves easier than repressing a group of people with breakfast programs. Yet they tried anyway.

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COINTELPRO: The Fear of Connection

The FBI’s COINTELPRO program didn’t target the Panthers because they were violent. They targeted the Panthers because they were effective. Between 1968 and 1971, the FBI engaged in a systematic campaign of counterintelligence to “neutralize” the Black Panther Party. They used infiltration, psychological warfare, and outright murder.

The Panthers were connecting dots. They linked local police brutality to global imperialism. They linked conditions in Oakland to conditions in Algiers. They built coalitions across racial and national lines. The FBI understood something that many activists today forget. A connected movement is a dangerous movement.

The Church Committee investigations later revealed the full scope of this repression. The damage was done by the mid-1970s. The Panthers had been decimated. Not before they built an international section in Algeria. Not before they made alliances with North Korea and China. Not before they inspired support groups in Britain, Germany, Sweden, Japan, and Israel.

Click here for old digital copies of Black Panther News Paper

The Takeaway for Today

Here we are in 2026. Public education faces attack. Medicaid and Medicare get gutted. Black history gets erased from curricula. What are we doing?

Some of us pontificate on the internet trying to get likes and views. Some of us accuse people doing actual work of performing for clout. The indictment hits close to home for many. We post about Palestine. We post about police brutality. We post about the school-to-prison pipeline. Are we feeding anyone? Are we organizing? Are we building institutions that can survive the next election cycle?

The Panthers ran the Free Breakfast Program for children, not for clout. They sold newspapers for 25 cents to fund their operations, not to build a personal brand. They took their case to the United Nations because they understood that justice requires witnesses, not just likes.

I was doing this work before social media existed the way it exists now. I was doing this work before people knew my name. I was doing this work before anyone called me anything. The reason I do this connects to those years before the platform. If people stopped following me tomorrow, guess what I would be doing? The same work. This work right here.

LINK OF OLD BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPERS

Key Takeaways

* Think globally, act locally is a strategy, not a slogan. The Panthers connected U.S. police brutality to international imperialism. You cannot fight local oppression without understanding its global context.

* Survival programs are revolutionary. Feeding children, providing healthcare, and supporting families are not distractions from the movement. They are the movement. “Survival pending revolution” means keeping people alive long enough to win.

* International solidarity is strategic, not symbolic. The Panthers allied with Palestine, North Korea, China, and liberation movements worldwide because they understood that imperialism is a global system requiring a global response.

* Repression targets connection. COINTELPRO succeeded not just because it used violence, but because it severed the connections between people and between issues. Movements become dangerous when they connect the dots.

* Local work precedes online presence. Many of us did the work before social media existed. The work remains primary. The content comes secondary.

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LeBron.

I need you to sit with something for a second.

Imagine if somebody asked you about visiting Adolf’s Germany during World War II. And instead of condemning the ovens, the death camps, the industrial-scale slaughter of millions, you said: “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard great things about it.”

Think about how preposterous that would sound. The rest of the entire world is watching the newsreels, seeing the smoke stacks, knowing the bodies are piling up. And you’re out here talking about the great things you heard.

That is exactly where we are right now. And this is why it’s not adding up. Respectfully, OG.

You, me, Spike Lee—we all be on the same internet. We see the same things.

(The Stakes - grounding it in reality)

Entire families. Wiped off the registry.

For those who don’t know, that means there is no living member left of that family. There will be nothing left of their DNA in this world. 902 families. Gone. Not from a virus. Not from a weather event. From bombs and bullets and a military machine doing exactly what it was designed to do.

That’s what this country—the one you heard great things about—is doing right now.

(The Visuals - showing, not telling)

Before I even get into Kyrie’s comments, or the symbolism of what he wore to NBA All-Star Weekend, let’s talk about what Spike Lee showed up in. For you. For everybody else that don’t know.

Respectfully, what Spike is wearing is called the Kufiya. It is a resistance symbol for Palestinians. Because of what the place he’s heard so much great about is doing to them. He got it on his bag. He got it on his sweater. And then he got the Palestinian flag on the strap of his bag. It’s not mutually exclusive.

This is what he did for Black History Month.

That’s what I call solidarity. That’s coalition building. Spike walked in with Marcus Garvey, MLK, and a side of Shakur on his fit—and the flag on his bag.

Then you look at Kyrie. Kyrie Irving with the same Kufi on his head that Spike had on his bag. Crimes are being committed against humanity. And most of us? Silent.

Cat got your tongue? Or are you just afraid to actually stand for something real?

(The Contradiction - holding the mirror up)

That’s what Kyrie was speaking on. That’s the energy behind what he’s wearing. In the same weekend, Kyrie wore a shirt with “PRESS” on it, symbolizing all the journalists—the ones trying to show us the truth—who have been taken out by the country you’ve heard so much great about.

It’s baffling. The juxtaposition is right there. Kyrie wearing that. You making those statements.

LeBron, you live on the internet. You’ve shown us that time and time again. You scroll. You post. You react. You see what we see.

There is no way—from October 2023 to now—that you did not look at a TV screen or your phone and watch how we were being live-streamed a genocide.

I can’t even say the word too loud anymore. We said it so much on these platforms that they’ve already started doing things to us. Shadowbanning. Demonetizing. Silencing.

(The Hard Truth - the closing argument)

Playing it safe. I get it, LeBron.

You got an empire to protect. You got brands. You got contracts. You got a legacy that extends far beyond the hardwood. I understand how the machine works. I understand that standing up means you might lose something, but at what cost?

Entire families. Wiped out. And we’re out here saying we’ve “heard great things.”

You said, “Hopefully someday I can make it over there.” You said, “I’ve never been there before, but I heard great things.”

We’ve all heard the propaganda. We’ve all heard the talking points. But we’ve also seen the kids. The tents. The churches, mosques, hospitals—all of it, obliterated.

This isn’t about choosing sides in a geopolitical conflict. This is about choosing humanity when humanity is being wiped off the registry in front of our eyes.

Education is elevation, but you can’t be elevated if you’re refusing to look down at the ground you’re standing on.

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You know it when you hear it. That classic jingle, the one promising “style, body, and shine.” Hair “so soft, silky, and free”—that look that’s “totally all mine.” Growing up, that commercial wasn’t just background noise. It was a whole era, a moment that shaped how we saw ourselves, and how the world wanted us to see ourselves. It was “Just For Me”—but who was it really for?

Let me tell y’all, those box relaxers weren’t just marketed to women. They found their way onto the heads of boys who wanted hang time, too. I’m speaking from experience. When I couldn’t get the braids to cooperate, I rocked the Al Sharpton. The ad wasn’t just selling a product, it was selling belonging. And looking back, it was selling a version of us that conformed to someone else’s standard.

Does that sound familiar to y’all?

It should because hair is never just hair. Hair is political and it’s a lesson, a license, sometimes a liability. Those box girls on the packaging? Twitter exposed a lot of them as natural—never even touched a relaxer. They had the “look” already, and we got bamboozled. It wasn’t about hair, it was about aspirations, about creditability, about appearing “professional.” Chasing European beauty standards, just to be seen as legitimate.

Marketing wasn’t just about what you buy—it was about what you become. Even now, research tells us what our community already felt in our bones. In 2021, they found Black women using these lye-containing products as little as seven times a year—over 15 years—have a 30% increased risk of developing breast cancer. Thirty percent. That’s not just expensive, that’s devastating.

Let’s unpack why the box relaxer became a staple. In the 1940s, perms were sophistication, a ticket to belong. Entertainers cosigned, and the masses followed. The 1960s came, afros started popping, roots reclaimed, pride restored. The industry didn’t like that, so they pivoted—relaxers became blowout kits for looser, “acceptable” curls. And here we are.

Eight of my sisters wanted to be on those boxes. Shout out to Latavia former member of Destiny’s Child—get your coin, pay your bills, no shade. I recognize the era for what it was: a symptom of a bigger system, a cycle of conformity.

Our hair, our bodies, our choices—none of them operate in isolation. The beauty standards we’re pushed toward aren’t just about looking good. They’re about belonging, they’re about safety, they’re about access. But they cost us more than dollars—they cost us our health, our self-image, our autonomy.

Key Takeaways

* The Marketing Mirage: Many of the models in relaxer ads were actually natural. This created an unattainable standard that drove sales but also drove insecurity.

* Health Over Hair: The 2021 study linking long-term lye-based relaxer use to a 30% increased risk of breast cancer is a stark reminder that beauty standards can have deadly consequences.

* History Repeats: The relaxer industry boomed in the 40s, took a hit during the natural 60s, and rebranded itself to survive. The cycle of pushing chemical straightening is deeply tied to economic and social pressures.

* It’s Okay to Look Back: Reflecting on our personal hair journeys isn’t about shame. It’s about understanding how we got here and making informed choices for the future.

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Related Readings

* “Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America” by Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps – A foundational text on the political and cultural history of Black hair.

* “The Crown Act: Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair” – Learn more about the movement to end hair discrimination in schools and workplaces. (crownact.com)

* “Black Women’s Hair Product Use and Breast Cancer Risk” (2021) – A deep dive into the Sister Study findings published in the International Journal of Cancer.

* “Good Hair” (2009) – directed by Jeff Stilson, produced by and starring Chris Rock – A documentary that explores the Black hair industry, from relaxers to weaves, with a mix of humor and hard truths.

* “Don’t Touch My Hair” by Emma Dabiri – A powerful exploration of the history, politics, and social significance of Black hair, from pre-colonial Africa to the present day.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The trick of time tells Black people that success requires distance from Blackness. Leaving the hood becomes maturity. Remaining connected becomes regression. Advancement is framed as movement away from Black community rather than transformation of Black conditions. Temporal language again disciplines identity.

Time also governs punishment.

Incarceration is measured in years stolen. Productivity is measured in time sold. Wealth is measured in time accumulated. Black life is repeatedly positioned as time available for extraction. Colonial labor systems imposed clock time on societies organized around cyclical rhythms. Discipline, punctuality, and scheduling became tools of domination.

Time became governance.

The core function of the trick of time is simple: convert injustice into delay. Inequality becomes something being worked on. Violence becomes something improving. Oppression becomes something ending soon. Responsibility shifts from present action to future patience.

The present remains unchanged.

The trick of time legitimizes waiting. The trick of time moralizes patience. The trick of time frames injustice as a scheduling issue. Liberation becomes an appointment always postponed.

Calling out the trick of time matters because it disrupts that postponement. Historical harm cannot be dismissed as distant when other histories remain alive. Structural inequality cannot be reframed as progress when outcomes stagnate. Hope cannot substitute for material change.

Time has been used to manage Black expectation.Time has been used to rationalize Black suffering.Time has been used to discipline Black imagination.

Rejecting the trick of time means refusing narratives that place justice permanently ahead. Rejecting the trick of time means confronting structures in the present. Rejecting the trick of time means recognizing that delay has always been a political strategy.

The question Baldwin asked still stands: how much time do you want?

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

5 Key Takeaways

* Time is used selectively to make Black suffering seem distant while keeping white history present.

* The “trick of time” converts injustice into delay and patience into virtue.

* Political hope often defers liberation into a future that never arrives.

* Visible Black success is used to mask structural inequality.

* Rejecting the trick of time requires confronting injustice in the present rather than waiting.

Related Readings

* Calvin Warren — Ontological Terror / “Black Nihilism”

* Johannes Fabian — Time and the Other

* James Baldwin — The Fire Next Time

* Saidiya Hartman — Lose Your Mother

* Frank Wilderson — Afropessimism

* Cedric Robinson — Black Marxism\

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Trust Black Women Is Not a Negotiation

There is still something many people believe they need from Black women before offering trust.There is still a condition.There is still a test.There is still a negotiation.

That truth sat heavy on me after a recent interaction. I was wearing a “Trust Black Women” shirt, standing in Houston, minding my business, when a man tried to play me. The question came fast, predictable, rehearsed:

“What about the Black women that lie?”

That reflex reveals everything.

A proposal followed. I asked him to consider a parallel. Imagine someone says, “Trust Black people,” and the immediate response is, “What about the ones that lie?” Most Black folks instantly recognize the issue. That move takes the worst example of a group and uses it to justify withholding baseline trust from the whole. That move is recognizable as racism when applied to Black people collectively.

That same move becomes acceptable, even normalized, when applied to Black women.

The symmetry is not accidental. The logic is identical.The ideology is familiar.The harm is structural.

Trusting women through the lens of their worst example mirrors how white supremacy teaches people to view Blackness itself. White supremacist thinking isolates the most stigmatized instance of a group and elevates it as representative truth. Suspicion then becomes rationalized as prudence. Bias then becomes framed as realism. Dehumanization then becomes reframed as discernment.

That pattern shows up again when people encounter the phrase “Trust Black Women.” Instead of hearing a political directive about correcting historic disbelief, some hear a personal claim about moral perfection. The slogan becomes interpreted as “Black women never lie,” which is not the claim being made.

Trust Black women is about starting position, not statistical denial of human fallibility.

Every social group contains people who lie. Every demographic contains people who cause harm. No serious political movement depends on the premise that any category of human beings is incapable of wrongdoing. The existence of wrongdoing has never disqualified any other group from receiving baseline credibility. No one responds to “believe victims” by asking whether some victims lie, then concludes disbelief should be the default. No one responds to “trust doctors” by citing medical malpractice as proof physicians should be presumed dishonest. No one responds to “trust voters” by highlighting voter fraud cases as reason to treat all ballots as suspect.

Selective skepticism is never random.

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Black women sit at the intersection of misogyny and anti-Blackness, which creates a long archive of disbelief attached to their testimony. Enslaved Black women were legally unrapeable. Black women reporting sexual violence were historically ignored or punished. Medical abuse against Black women relied on assumptions they exaggerated pain. Welfare discourse painted Black mothers as deceitful. Criminal legal narratives portrayed Black women as manipulative or inherently suspect. Media tropes cast them as angry, dramatic, or untrustworthy.

“Trust Black Women” responds to that history.

The slogan does not erase complexity. The slogan corrects imbalance. The slogan addresses power. The slogan identifies where disbelief has been structurally concentrated and says: start from credibility instead of suspicion.

Opposition to that principle often arrives disguised as neutrality. People claim they are simply acknowledging reality: some people lie. That statement is true and irrelevant. The issue is not whether any individual can lie. The issue is why Black women uniquely face collective doubt as a starting condition.

When someone hears “Trust Black Women” and immediately reaches for “what about the ones who lie,” they reveal an assumption hierarchy. Trust is seen as something Black women must earn against a backdrop of presumed doubt. Other groups receive trust until disproven. Black women often face doubt until proven.

That difference is political.

The Houston interaction was not unusual. Variations of the same exchange occur daily across digital spaces, workplaces, movements, and relationships. The rhetorical structure remains constant: identify a negative example, universalize it to the group, use it to justify withholding solidarity.

White supremacist discourse does this to Black people broadly. Patriarchal discourse does this to women broadly. Misogynoir does this specifically to Black women.

The slogan therefore operates as a counter-narrative. Trust Black Women interrupts the reflex that seeks a disqualifying anecdote. Trust Black Women refuses the framing that treats Black women’s credibility as contingent. Trust Black Women asserts that historic disbelief requires intentional reversal.

Many people resist because the phrase removes evaluative authority. If Black women are trusted as narrators of their own experience, outside observers lose the power to adjudicate whose suffering is legitimate. Discomfort then gets reframed as skepticism. Skepticism then gets reframed as objectivity.

Language reveals ideology. The question “what about the ones who lie” functions less as inquiry and more as permission structure. It authorizes doubt toward a marginalized group by citing the inevitability of imperfection that exists in every group. It maintains asymmetry while appearing neutral.

Trust Black Women asks for symmetry.

If one recognizes the injustice of distrusting Black people because some individuals commit harm, the same reasoning must apply to Black women. Any attempt to separate those logics collapses under scrutiny. The frameworks are structurally identical. The historical harms are interlocking. The ideological roots are shared.

The shirt did not create the tension. The shirt exposed it.The slogan did not invent distrust. The slogan named it.The exchange did not surprise me. The exchange confirmed the work remains unfinished.

Trust Black Women is not about sainthood.Trust Black Women is about starting point.Trust Black Women is about power.Trust Black Women is about history.Trust Black Women is about refusing white supremacist and patriarchal reasoning when it appears in everyday conversation disguised as common sense.

The question people should ask themselves is simpler than the reflex they keep reaching for: why does the possibility that some Black women lie feel like relevant counter-evidence to trusting Black women at all?

The answer reveals more about the listener than the slogan ever could.

Related Readings

* Moya Bailey — Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance

* Patricia Hill Collins — Black Feminist Thought

* Saidiya Hartman — Scenes of Subjection

* Dorothy Roberts — Killing the Black Body

* bell hooks — Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

* Kimberlé Crenshaw — Mapping the Margins (intersectionality)

* Jennifer L. Morgan — Laboring Women

* Dána-Ain Davis — Reproductive Injustice

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There are moments when something you learned in your twenties becomes the lens that clarifies your thirties. The Fifth Circuit ruling allowing indefinite detention in Texas triggered a memory from my college policy debate days — presidential war powers, indefinite detention, state authority. The theory did not stay in the classroom. It followed me into this moment.

What I am naming today is whiteness.

Not skin color.Not individual morality.Not personal virtue.

Whiteness as a site of power.

Dr. George Yancy describes whiteness as a site of power that maintains itself through invisibility. Arnold Farr calls it the “view from nowhere.” Power that presents itself as neutral. Authority that calls itself objective. Domination disguised as business as usual.

Whiteness functions best when it goes unnamed.

The moment you name it, you are accused of creating division. The moment you identify it, you are told you are attacking white men. The moment you articulate its structure, you are called radical.

Critical race theory. Feminism. Marxism. Intersectionality. Each of these intellectual traditions threatens whiteness because they make it visible.

Visibility destabilizes power.

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The Invisible Norm

Ask yourself: Have you ever heard of White Entertainment Television?

No one has.

Because whiteness does not mark itself.

Black Entertainment Television must specify Black. Mainstream television does not specify white. Friends is not labeled white. Everybody Loves Raymond is not labeled white. The Lord of the Rings is not labeled white.

Absence becomes neutrality.Neutrality becomes norm.Norm becomes power.

Whiteness is the transcendental norm — the background assumption shaping what is considered human, legitimate, credible, stable, democratic.

When conflict happens between white people, it is treated as individual dysfunction. When conflict happens between Black people, it becomes pathology.

That is how invisibility works.

Racial Illiteracy and the Epistemology of Ignorance

When someone responds to a conversation about whiteness by saying “Black people commit crimes,” they are performing what scholars call an epistemology of ignorance. Knowledge production rooted in selective blindness.

The data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation consistently shows similar intra-racial crime patterns across racial groups. That fact rarely disrupts the myth.

Whiteness survives through recentering.

Name Epstein. Someone says Black crime.

Name white supremacy. Someone says reverse racism.

Name power. Someone says personal responsibility.

Redirection is not random. Redirection is protection.

White Privilege Is Not the Absence of Struggle

White privilege does not mean white people do not suffer. It means whiteness is not the reason they suffer.

A white person can experience classism, ableism, sexism, homophobia. Those forms of oppression do not contradict the existence of racial privilege.

Privilege means race is not the obstacle.

Declaring privilege does not absolve participation in systems of domination. Admitting whiteness is not the same as dismantling it. Confession is not transformation.

Ethical responsibility requires continual interrogation of how one benefits from and reproduces systems of power — even unintentionally.

American Hegemony as Global Whiteness

The theory does not stop at domestic politics.

American hegemony — the dominant global position of the United States after World War II — operates through military, economic, and cultural authority. Scholars describe it as shaping the liberal world order.

Invasion becomes humanitarian intervention.Extraction becomes foreign aid.Imperialism becomes democracy promotion.

That is whiteness at the geopolitical level.

When America bombs a country, it is stability. When another nation asserts force, it is aggression. The moral framework bends around power.

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover once warned about the rise of a “Black Messiah.” The state feared leaders like Malcolm X and organizations like the Black Panther Party because they named power directly.

Naming power destabilizes hierarchy. Hierarchy sustains social order. Social order protects whiteness.

The Cost of Discomfort

Whenever whiteness is identified, discomfort emerges. Discomfort quickly becomes the central issue.

White discomfort becomes reason for censorship.White discomfort becomes justification for violence.White discomfort becomes reason to derail dialogue.

Law enforcement has historically weaponized perceived discomfort to justify harm against Black bodies. Personal fear overrides structural analysis.

That is the architecture. Whiteness demands recentering. When you refuse to recenter it, the backlash begins.

The View From Nowhere

Arnold Farr’s concept of the “view from nowhere” explains how whiteness frames itself as objective reason. It claims universality while speaking from a particular position.

Islam can be generalized as violent.Black communities can be generalized as criminal.White supremacy cannot be generalized as violent without triggering outrage.

History explains why.

Tulsa race massacre.Rosewood massacre.COINTELPRO.

Calling out white supremacy has historically led to state repression.

Fear is not irrational. Fear is historical memory.

Education Is Elevation

My debate background did not just teach me how to argue. It gave me language. Language allows articulation. Articulation disrupts invisibility.

Education is elevation.

The purpose is not ego. The purpose is clarity. The goal is not division. The goal is literacy.

Whiteness thrives on racial illiteracy.

Naming power is the first step toward restructuring it.

Key Takeaways

* Whiteness is a structure of power, not merely a racial identity.

* Invisibility is its primary mechanism of maintenance.

* Racial illiteracy protects systems of domination.

* Declaring privilege is not the same as dismantling it.

* American hegemony reflects whiteness at a global scale.

* Naming power disrupts hierarchy.

* Education provides the language necessary to articulate structural reality.

Works Cited

Farr, Arnold. Whiteness Visible: Enlightenment Racism and the Structure of Racialized Consciousness.Yancy, George. Look, a White!: Philosophical Essays on Whiteness.McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” 1989.Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract.Hoover, J. Edgar. FBI Memorandum on “Black Nationalist Hate Groups,” 1968.Cadmus Journal. “American Hegemony and Global Order.”Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Moon Mountain Studio, Shirley Figueroa, M Hope, HoneyBadger, nobu, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

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You know it when you see it. The sudden outrage. The selective moral panic. The way racism becomes real only when it can be folded neatly into someone’s political narrative and weaponized against the “other side.”

What we’re witnessing right now isn’t a debate about racism. It’s a demonstration of racial illiteracy.

Racial literacy is the ability to read power, history, and material consequences—not just vibes, not just intent, not just who feels offended in the moment. And America, across party lines, keeps failing that test.

In this livestream, I walked through a familiar contradiction: the same political actors who insist Black people exaggerate racism suddenly demand outrage when racism can be used as a talking point. That’s not accountability. That’s narrative control.

When racism is discussed without context—without law, history, or power—it becomes a performance. We argue over feelings while violence remains intact. We argue over intent while systems keep doing exactly what they were designed to do.

The law has never been a neutral moral compass. Slavery was legal. Lynchings were legal. Segregation was legal. Legality has always been a shield for violence, not a guarantee of justice. So when people say “just follow the law,” what they’re really saying is “submit to the hierarchy.”

Both liberals and conservatives benefit from that hierarchy. Red states and blue states incarcerate Black people at similar rates. Red cities and blue cities produce the same outcomes. The split between left and right cannot speak to Black political reality because both wings are attached to the same bird.

Racial literacy demands that we stop mistaking symbolism for substance. Hurt feelings do not outweigh material harm. Words do not outweigh systems. And neutrality does not equal innocence.

Education is elevation—but only if we’re willing to learn how power actually works.

The question isn’t whether racism exists.The question is whether you’re willing to read it honestly when it doesn’t flatter you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

* Racial literacy is about systems, not intent

* Both parties benefit from Black suffering

* Neutrality protects violence

* Legality is not morality

* Education threatens power

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Democracy Was Never Neutral — And That’s the Point

Every time we talk about democracy, somebody eventually hits you with the same line:“It’s about inclusion. Everybody deserves a voice.”

That sounds good. It’s clean. It’s aspirational.It’s also ahistorical as hell.

What usually gets framed as a “problem of exclusion” isn’t really about who’s left out—it’s about who gets to define legitimacy in the first place. And that distinction matters, especially for Black folks, because “exclusion” is a word that hits our nervous system differently. We’ve been excluded on purpose. Systematically. Violently.

But hear me out.

I don’t actually think exclusion is the core problem. I think the problem is how we understand exclusion—and how democracy has always disguised power decisions as moral ones, here’s the uncomfortable truth….Every contribution to governance is not a productive contribution.

Malcolm X taught extensively about the hypocrisy of democracy and perhaps its a core feature of concept. During this discussion on The Chop Up Show I couldn’t find the words to fully explain what I was grasping for, but now I can a little in this piece.

People usually talk about democracy in an idealism vs realism binary because it lets them avoid confronting power head-on. Idealism treats democracy as a moral aspiration—participation, equality, “the people”—while realism looks at democracy as it actually operates: managed access, unequal influence, and sanctioned exclusion.

The tension isn’t a flaw; it’s the point—idealism launders legitimacy while realism does the dirty work of governance. Once you see that split, it becomes clear that democracy doesn’t fail when it excludes people—it reveals who it was always meant to serve.

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I have political conversations all the time. Folks will unload their opinions—strong opinions—about policy, culture, identity, the future of the country. Then at the end they’ll casually say, “But I don’t vote.”

And sometimes?I’m relieved.

Because if your entire political worldview is built on protecting hierarchy, punishing marginalized people, and voting against your own material interests just to preserve cultural dominance—why would I want your ballot anywhere near collective decision-making?

That’s when people start panicking and yelling, “That’s anti-democratic!”

Is it though?

Screening Ain’t the Same as Discrimination

We need to stop pretending that screening and discrimination are the same thing.

During Jim Crow, literacy tests and “count the jellybeans” nonsense weren’t about civic competence—they were about racial ideology. Black people weren’t excluded because of what they believed or contributed, but because whiteness had already decided we were intellectually and morally unfit.

That’s discrimination.

But saying fascists shouldn’t be shaping governance?That’s screening.

Germany doesn’t allow Nazis to run for office—not because they hate free speech, but because they understand what anti-democratic ideologies do once they’re given institutional power. When someone openly says they’re willing to vote for anti-democratic outcomes, that’s not “difference of opinion.” That’s a threat to the system itself.

And this is where democracy starts eating its own tail.

Athens, Whiteness, and the Theft of Collective Governance

We give ancient Greece way too much credit.

Not because Athens didn’t matter—but because collective governance existed long before Western civilization slapped the label “democracy” on it. Mesopotamia. African societies. Indigenous governance systems. Consensus-based leadership models. All of it existed before Athens decided only land-owning men counted as people.

What Greece actually did was brand governance—and whiteness inherited that branding.

So when people say, “Well, democracy excluded women, slaves, and foreigners back then,” they’re telling on themselves. That wasn’t a flaw of collective governance. That was a flaw of how humanity was defined.

And that residue never left.

Every modern democracy still carries the ghost of that original hierarchy—especially the subordination of women and the racialized boundaries of citizenship. That’s why you see white men today trying to “return democracy to its roots.” They’re not talking about civic participation. They’re talking about power.

Hypocrisy or Aspiration?

People love asking whether America’s democracy was hypocritical or aspirational.

The Declaration of Independence said “all men are created equal” while slavery was not only legal, but foundational. Black people weren’t participants in democracy—we were objects inside of it. Pieces on the chessboard. Property whose existence could be democratically debated.

That’s not a contradiction you grow out of.That’s a foundation you build on.

So when Black folks, queer folks, marginalized folks struggle to see democracy as redeemable, it’s not cynicism—it’s memory.

Democracy didn’t fail us later.It was never designed with us in mind in the first place.

And until we stop romanticizing it—until we stop confusing Western democracy with collective governance—we’ll keep having the same fake arguments about voting, participation, and legitimacy while fascism keeps slipping through the front door with a ballot in its hand.

Related Readings + Bibliography

Core Texts on Democracy & Critique

* Aristotle, Politics

* Plato, The Republic

* Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

* Robert Dahl, On Democracy

Black Political Thought & Radical Critique

* Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism

* W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

* Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection

* Frank Wilderson III, Afropessimism

* Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

Feminist & Intersectional Critiques

* Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract

* bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman

* Sylvia Wynter, Unsettling the Coloniality of Being

Whiteness, Power, and Governance

* Charles Mills, The Racial Contract

* Joel Dinerstein, Technology and Its Discontents

* Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

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Catch the full livestream from last week of The Chop Up Show with The Conscious Lee, Toya Green and The Political Plug.

ToyaG: https://www.tiktok.com/@profgreenHDPolitical Plug: https://www.tiktok.com/@thepoliticalplugConscious Lee: https://www.tiktok.com/@theconsciousleeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechopupshow/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thechopupshowpod

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe